Aisling Gayle (16 page)

“I’m only codding you,” he said, laughing. “Sure, I’m off home for a wash and change – and then I’m out for dinner with some of the drama crowd.” He lifted his jacket and hat.

“Anywhere we’d know?” Rose Quinn suddenly piped up from her corner at the door.

“Now that,” Oliver said, winking over at Pauline, “would be telling.” He lifted his soft hat from the table. “See you, Charles, and don’t be letting these women give you a hard time. We men have got to stick together.”

“Oh, right . . .” Charles said absently, having suddenly remembered that he’d left his fountain pen on the sitting-room mantelpiece, well out of the reach of Bernadette’s inquisitive little fingers. He suddenly made a dive for the door, head down – like a bull charging at a gate. Hopefully, Pauline hadn’t moved the pen when she was tidying around today. She was worse than his mother for moving things – always closing books and newspapers when he’d deliberately left them open so that he wouldn’t lose his place.

Rose Quinn shifted nimbly out of his way, hoping Pauline hadn’t noticed the alarm on her face. Charles was an unknown quantity where women were concerned – and she wasn’t going to give him the chance to collide headlong into her. You could never tell what was going on in the minds of over-brainy fellas like Charles Kearney. Probably nothing – but you never could tell where any man was concerned.

Rose’s father’s car was parked nose to nose with Oliver’s.

“That’s a fine-looking car you’re driving,” Oliver said to her, walking around it. “Will you turn on the engine for a few minutes, to let me hear how it sounds?”

Rose got into the car, still chewing on her gum, pulled the door shut and turned the key in the ignition.

Pauline followed Oliver to the bonnet of the car. “Any news from Aisling?” she asked, feeling guilty that she hadn’t even thought to ask about her sister and parents. That Charles had annoyed her so much, plus having Oliver sitting there at the table with Rose Quinn ogling him, had knocked her off her stride.

“No,” said Oliver in a low enough voice for Rose not to hear. “Not a word since she phoned to say she’d arrived.” He turned his hat around in his hands. “Hopefully, the holiday will do her good . . . she’s not been in good form recently. Kind of strained and tight in herself.”

Pauline’s face clouded over. “Oh . . .” she said lamely. She didn’t want to get into an awkward conversation now, especially within earshot of Rose Quinn.

“If you hear anything about how the holiday’s going,” she said quietly, “drop out and let me know.”

“Oh, I will,” Oliver said, giving a thumbs-up to Rose. “And you do the same . . . you could get Charles to drop you over at the shop around twelve any day next week, and we could go out for a bit of lunch.”

Pauline nodded, not at all sure about his suggestion.

He touched her arm lightly. “I could do with having a bit of a chat about Aisling . . . and you would be the very woman to understand.”

Pauline glanced up towards her bedroom window. “I’ll see how things go here,” she told him. “Maybe a day that Peenie and Mrs Kelly are in to keep an eye on Bernadette.”

“If not, bring her with you,” he suggested. “Sure, wouldn’t it just make my day to have
two
of my favourite girls out on a date with me.”

“We’ll see,” Pauline said vaguely. “I’ll let you know.”

“Grand,” Oliver said. He turned towards his own car. “And be sure to enjoy your night out, Pauline – you deserve it.”

Chapter 13

Charles pulled out a carver chair from the end of the dining-room table at the large, bay window. He opened his page-a-day diary, dampened his finger on his tongue, then flicked through until he reached the correct month and day. Then, he rested the end of his fountain pen on his bottom teeth while he mused over the right words to use.

There was disappointingly little to report.

The visit out to Mrs Lynch’s this evening had been fairly straightforward. It had been a simple matter of driving over, knocking on the door, getting the jackets from Mrs Lynch, and paying her the money.

There had been very little conversation between them – just the business of the jackets, with the seamstress showing him where she’d repaired the pocket on the blazer and then showing him how well she had sewed on the elbow patches. All fairly mundane stuff. She had seemed a little strange, Charles thought. Definitely not as friendly as she had been when he had given her the
Quality Street on the previous occasion. He wondered
now if he should take something else when he handed the suit trousers in. Maybe a box of fancy biscuits . . . or something along those lines.

Head bent low, Charles started writing in his tiny, sharp-angled script. He wrote for over half a page, then he came to an abrupt halt. The final part of the meeting with Mrs Lynch found him stumped for words – the bit when she had asked him if he had been in the area of her house the night before. Charles hadn’t known what to say to that.

He hated the thought of telling a lie. He had taken a deep breath and said that he had indeed been in the Tullamore area doing deliveries, and he might have passed by her house – but he wasn’t altogether sure.

Mrs Lynch had gone strangely silent at that point. Charles suddenly wondered now if she had heard the commotion with the madman that had jumped on his father’s car. But he realised that mentioning that incident would only draw attention to the fact that he had definitely been in the area.

He was still pondering over this delicate part of his diary entry when he heard a door creaking open upstairs. He went out into the hallway to find his little niece making her way down the stairs in her pink teddy-bear pyjamas that her Auntie Jean had sent from America for her third birthday.

“Mammy . . .” she said, looking around. Then, “A drink?”

“Wait there!” Charles ordered, and moved as swiftly as he could to meet her, and carry her the rest of the way down. “I’ll get you a nice drink now,” he told her soothingly. “Uncle Charles will get you a nice drink.”

“Where Mammy?” the child asked, as they headed into the warm kitchen.

“Oh, she’ll be back shortly,” Charles said, sitting her down gently on a chair. “Your Uncle Charles will be minding you until she gets back.”

He opened the fridge and lifted out a jug of cold milk. Then, he went over to the old pine dresser and lifted a little two-handled mug from one of the hooks. He filled the mug three-quarters of the way up and then set it down on the table in front of the child. “Now . . .” he said, opening the cupboard that had Mrs Kelly’s cakes in it, along with the plainer sort of biscuits that Pauline preferred for the child, “let’s see what we have here . . .”

Bernadette selected a custard cream and a digestive biscuit from the tin, then sat up nice and straight at the table like her Uncle Charles had told her to.

Half an hour later, after having read two
Brer Rabbit
and one
Noddy
story, Charles carried Bernadette back out into the hallway, preparing to mount the stairs again.

“Say goodnight to the Lady!” Bernadette said, struggling
in her uncle’s arms. Charles gave a loud sigh, and then turned back towards the alcove at the bottom of the stairs, within which stood a fair-sized statue of the Blessed Virgin. It was a special statue – more church size than home – that Maggie had specially ordered through a convent in Dublin.

This was one of Maggie’s little rituals, when she was taking the child up to bed. She would lift Bernadette up to kiss the statue, and the child would say:
Goodnight, Our Lady, and please help to make me a good girl tomorrow.

Charles held Bernadette up now, gripping her tightly under the arms. Then he moved her towards the head of the statue. Bernadette made loud kissing noises and then said her little piece about being a good girl tomorrow. Then, just as Charles went to hoist her away, she suddenly lunged forward, and with one bite removed the holy statue’s nose.

“Mother of God!” Charles spluttered, looking at the ragged plaster that had once been the Blessed Virgin’s nose. “Oh, your granny will absolutely kill you!”

But Bernadette had suddenly discovered that the enticing-looking nose did not taste as good as it looked. She was now more concerned with spitting the horrible, sour, crumbly stuff out of her mouth, than worrying about what her granny would have to say.

As he set the child down on the second stair, a cold shiver suddenly went down Charles’s spine.
What if the child was poisoned? What if there was lead or something dangerous in the statue?

He whipped her up off the stairs and flew with her in his arms into the kitchen again. “Spit it out!” he ordered her. “Spit it out!”

The child spat out what remained of the plaster, and held her tongue out to her uncle to show him. “Horrible!” she told him, grimacing and shaking her head.

“And
horrible
is exactly your granny will be when she sees what’s happened to her holy statue,” Charles muttered to himself as he opened the fridge to pour Bernadette another half-glass of milk. He had read somewhere that milk neutralized acids and the like. Hopefully, the innocent-looking statue didn’t contain anything more sinister than plain, ordinary plaster.

* * *

Pauline Kearney held her head high, walking in the door of the church-hall behind Rose Quinn. As she passed through the gauntlet of boys and men who were lurking around the door, she looked neither left nor right. Ignoring the comments and low wolf-whistles, she kept her arms folded over her chest and her gaze firmly concentrated on the back of Rose’s blonde head, until they were safely inside the dimly lit hall.

“Did you see who I saw as we were coming in?” Rose giggled, as they headed for a table up near the band. The few lagers she had had in the hotel down the road had lifted her spirits admirably well.

“Who?” Pauline said, moving around the back of the small table, where she could see all that was going on in the hall.

“Jack Byrne
,” Rose mouthed, rooting in her bag for her cigarettes and lighter. “Didn’t you see him? He was just inside the door.”

“Don’t tell me he was with that crowd that were leering at us as we came in?” Pauline said, her brow furrowed in disapproval.

“No, indeed he wasn’t,” her friend said. “He was sitting
at a table at the side on his own.” She put the cigarettes and lighter on the table. “And he was watching you when we walked in.”

“Go away with you!” Pauline said, unbuttoning her white cardigan. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m not in the least bit interested in Jack Byrne.” She took the cardigan off, and hung it carefully on the back of her wooden chair. What she’d said wasn’t entirely the truth, but she wasn’t going to let Rose know that.

It had taken Pauline some time to catch on, but gradually she had become aware that Rose had a habit of making a play for any fellow she expressed an interest in. And she was fairly sure that Rose let them know about Bernadette much earlier than she would have liked. She hadn’t any concrete proof about it, and didn’t want to get into a row with Rose over it – for the Quinns were renowned for their sharp tongues. But it had made Pauline wary of saying too much in front of her friend.

The fact was that Pauline couldn’t afford to lose a friend like Rose. Even with her very obvious faults, Pauline knew she had some good points. Rose was someone who didn’t judge her too harshly about having an illegitimate daughter, and she was fairly reliable for going out. Plus she had the advantage of being able to drive – with her father’s car often at her disposal.

And they wouldn’t be over in Mullingar tonight if it hadn’t been for Rose and the car.

“Lemonade or tea?” Pauline asked now, lifting her handbag.

“Oh, lemonade,” Rose said. “I
always feel like an ould granny drinking tea in a dancehall.” She leaned across the table. “By the looks of it,” she said in a low voice, “there’s plenty of grannies around tonight.”

Pauline laughed. “Oh, you’re terrible, Rose,” she said. “Sure, they’re not much older than us.”

Rose lit her cigarette, holding the silver lighter aloft in an elegant manner, reminiscent of a forties film star. “I’d say there’s a good few of them here tonight in their thirties,” she said, “which is no harm – for it makes us look ravishingly young by comparison.”

“I’m going for the lemonade,” Pauline giggled, “before you say something worse.” And as she walked across the hall in front of the band, towards the ante-room where the refreshments were sold, Pauline gave a quick glance at the tables nearby. She didn’t find that any of the girls looked much older than herself. Then it struck her that Rose might be having one of her little ‘digs’, because she was nearly four years older than her friend. Nearer thirty than twenty. And still single. The thought made her chest tighten, and the feeling of self-consciousness quickened her high-heeled steps towards the ante-room.

An hour later as she twirled around the room to a hearty version of
The Wild Colonial
Boy
, Pauline knew that there was no problem with her age or how she had looked.

Since the band had struck up, neither she nor Rose had missed even one dance. The fellows were making a bee-line for them. Sometimes they came in pairs, and sometimes one at a time. But if one of them was asked first, it was only a matter of time until the other one joined her on the floor.